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Speed of Evolution: Are we smarter than x000 years ago?

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I'd like to believe we are smarter than just 2,000 years ago. Why? There's no one claiming that someone has parted a sea or walked around healing people.

Well, actually, I'm sure there are, but the mass population isn't so readily accepting of the supernatural and extraordinary. It's funny. More and more people are looking at scientific methods to explain the unknown. Now if only we could get rid of the people who don't, we'd be golden.

Maybe in another 2,000 years, the part of the female brain that deals with sexual attraction will evolve to include an attraction to intelligence instead of just the attraction to the traditional physical traits of masculinity. Nerds could be getting head in abstract algebra class!
 
Syringer said:
Given the average intelligence level of today, I'm scared to think how dumb people may have once been.
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I doubt it was as bad as today. Not having common sense back then could get you killed; today it gets you a handout from the government or a reality TV show.
 
reallyscrued said:
I'd like to believe we are smarter than just 2,000 years ago. Why? There's no one claiming that someone has parted a sea or walked around healing people.

Well, actually, I'm sure there are, but the mass population isn't so readily accepting of the supernatural and extraordinary. It's funny. More and more people are looking at scientific methods to explain the unknown. Now if only we could get rid of the people who don't, we'd be golden.

Maybe in another 2,000 years, the part of the female brain that deals with sexual attraction will evolve to include an attraction to intelligence instead of just the attraction to the traditional physical traits of masculinity. Nerds could be getting head in abstract algebra class!
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That has nothing to do with intelligence. There was no opposing and compelling evidence at the time. You believe in science blindly without having done the research yourself. How do you know for sure that e=mc2? Is there a way to prove or disprove it?
 
iamanidiot said:
That has nothing to do with intelligence. There was no opposing and compelling evidence at the time. You believe in science blindly without having done the research yourself. How do you know for sure that e=mc2? Is there a way to prove or disprove it?
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Whoa. Struck a nerve with someone.

...when the fuck did I mention anything about e=mc2? You're just using it an example right? I'm not going to waste my time with this.

Look buddy, I'm not here to get into an argument with you. My post outlined what I believed. Don't like it? Get off the internets.

EDIT: Oh and by the way, that has EVERYTHING to do with intelligence.
 
iamanidiot said:
That has nothing to do with intelligence. There was no opposing and compelling evidence at the time. You believe in science blindly without having done the research yourself. How do you know for sure that e=mc2? Is there a way to prove or disprove it?
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We've seen videos of nuclear bombs, and two of them killed several hundred thousand Japanese people. This conclusively proves that it actually does work.

James Randi will give anyone a million dollars if they can walk on water with no bullshit parlor tricks. So far 0 people have won that contest.
 
reallyscrued said:
Whoa. Struck a nerve with someone.

...when the fuck did I mention anything about e=mc2? You're just using it an example right? I'm not going to waste my time with this.

Look buddy, I'm not here to get into an argument with you. My post outlined what I believed. Don't like it? Get off the internets.

EDIT: Oh and by the way, that has EVERYTHING to do with intelligence.
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Nope, nothing to do with intelligence. Unless you live by only what you personally have come up with, you blindly believe in something. Are you proposing that a being that is super intelligent will live in such a fashion? Yes, the equation is an example.

Nuke does not prove e=mc2, it only proves that there's a shitload of energy/mass.

There are derivations that prove e=mc2 hundreds of years after it was written. But for the 99.99% of us who don't fully understand it, we blindly believe in it.

http://www.ptep-online.com/index_files/2006/PP-07-03.PDF

I'm not religious, but to say that intelligence can be assessed by beliefs is plain ridiculous. It's human nature to belong and believe in absurd things. Look at cults. Their intelligence is not lower than average, through brain manipulations, anything is possible.
 
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iamanidiot said:
Nope, nothing to do with intelligence. Unless you live by only what you personally have come up with, you blindly believe in something. Are you proposing that a being that is super intelligent will live in such a fashion? Yes, the equation is an example.
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Holy shit, please tell me you're joking. I don't get how you can call someone who believes in one view "blindly believing in something" and someone who is religious...not..blindly believing in something. I mean, that's is what you're comparing it to right? I'm just inferring here.


In 2008, intelligence researcher Helmuth Nyborg examined whether IQ relates to denomination and income, using representative data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth, which includes intelligence tests on a representative selection of American youth, where they have also replied to questions about religious belief. His results, published in the scientific journal Intelligence demonstrated that on average, Atheists scored 1.95 IQ points higher than Agnostics, 3.82 points higher than Liberal persuasions, and 5.89 IQ points higher than Dogmatic persuasions. [4] "I'm not saying that believing in God makes you dumber. My hypothesis is that people with a low intelligence are more easily drawn toward religions, which give answers that are certain, while people with a high intelligence are more skeptical," says the professor.[5]

Nyborg also co-authored a study with Richard Lynn, emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Ulster, which compared religious belief and average national IQs in 137 countries. [6] The study analysed the issue from several viewpoints. Firstly, using data from a U.S. study of 6,825 adolescents, the authors found that atheists scored 6 g-IQ points higher than those adhering to a religion.

Secondly, the authors investigated the link between religiosity and intelligence on a country level. Among the sample of 137 countries, only 23 (17&#37😉 had more than 20% of atheists, which constituted “virtually all the higher IQ countries.” The authors reported a correlation of 0.60 between atheism rates and level of intelligence, which is “highly statistically significant.” This portion of the study uses the same data set as Lynn's work IQ and the Wealth of Nations.
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Cite: http://trance.nu/v4/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1834301

Look at cults. Their intelligence is not lower than average,
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What the fuck, are you pulling stuff out of your ass? Please link me a study that tested the intelligence of the average cult member...
(Btw, I don't see why it can't be argued the average religious person is a cult member.)

And stop it with that e=mc2 bullshit. That has nothing to do with this topic.
 
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reallyscrued said:
Holy shit, please tell me you're joking. I don't get how you can call someone who believes in one view "blindly believing in something" and someone who is religious...not..blindly believing in something. I mean, that's is what you're comparing it to right? I'm just inferring here.

Fine, you know where, here:
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Reading comprehension. Do you have it?
 
reallyscrued said:
No, I guess not iamanidiot. I have no reading comprehension. You got me. Holy shit, I'm so dumb. Someone make sure I take the short bus to school tomorrow.
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Haha, this gave me a nice chuckle. Anyways, one of the smartest people I know believes in god and the whole spiel, so ever since I've stopped associating intelligence with beliefs. This kid got into Harvard without a sweat and holds his own in every argument I've ever been in with him, including religious ones. Not that he was able to convince me, but his counterpoints left be shooting blanks. Take it with a few grains of salt.
 
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iamanidiot said:
Haha, this gave me a nice chuckle. Anyways, one of the smartest people I know believes in god and the whole spiel, so ever since I've stopped associating intelligence with smarts. This kid got into Harvard without a sweat and holds his own in every argument I've ever been in with him, including religious ones. Take it with a few grains of salt.
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Yup. The fact that there is one kid you know that got into Harvard that is religious shakes the very foundation of our understanding of intelligence vs religiosity.

...You know there have been many people that have made revolutionary advances in mathematics and science that were religious right? In turn, I'm sure there are a lot of stupid athiests. What's this all mean? Nothing. Because we're talking about evolutionary intelligence, intelligence of our species as a whole. The few oddballs at either end of the spectrum are almost insignificant to the big picture. Did you even read gibson's link?

Keep your salt buddy.
 
iamanidiot said:
Nuke does not prove e=mc2, it only proves that there's a shitload of energy/mass.

There are derivations that prove e=mc2 hundreds of years after it was written. But for the 99.99% of us who don't fully understand it, we blindly believe in it.
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What an odd thing to say, considering the bulk of the population understands this equation. It's from grade 11 physics. While kinetic energy is 0.5mv^2, the energy associated with mass defect uses c because resulting energy waves with no mass have a velocity of c by definition. Using old school newtonian physics from several hundred years ago, one would expect the mass defect to have a binding energy of 0.5mc^2. Somehow einstein's work removes the 0.5 (how???) and now it's just E=mc^2.
 
ShawnD1 said:
What an odd thing to say, considering the bulk of the population understands this equation. It's from grade 11 physics. While kinetic energy is 0.5mv^2, the energy associated with mass defect uses c because resulting energy waves with no mass have a velocity of c by definition. Using old school newtonian physics from several hundred years ago, one would expect the mass defect to have a binding energy of 0.5mc^2. Somehow einstein's work removes the 0.5 (how???) and now it's just E=mc^2.
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Shawn, this really has nothing to do with this topic. I'm starting to think iamanidiot's responses were just a failed attempt at trolling anyway. He sounds like he's not a day past high school.

What might be worth mentioning though was that Einstein was very confused about his religious beliefs for most of his life.
 
ShawnD1 said:
What an odd thing to say, considering the bulk of the population understands this equation. It's from grade 11 physics. While kinetic energy is 0.5mv^2, the energy associated with mass defect uses c because resulting energy waves with no mass have a velocity of c by definition. Using old school newtonian physics from several hundred years ago, one would expect the mass defect to have a binding energy of 0.5mc^2. Somehow einstein's work removes the 0.5 (how???) and now it's just E=mc^2.
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Everyone knows what it means, the proof, not so much. You are using prederived formulas.
 
reallyscrued said:
What might be worth mentioning though was that Einstein was very confused about his religious beliefs for most of his life.
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He sounds like a non-practicing jew.
-He hated the idea of quantum mechanics; god doesn't roll dice or flip coins.
-He believed there was a religious reason for doing science, but it didn't necessarily relate to a personal god.
-He believed that understanding the universe brings one closer to god, or at least closer to understanding god.

Einstein emphasized that religion and science were not mutually exclusive and both ultimately had the same goal (in his opinion). Both exist for the sake of finding truth.

Ironically it seems scientists like Einstein make better religious people than most. Those modern creationists we all hate so much put strange and irrational limitations on god. Evolutionary biologist Ken Miller's god is capable of creating a self-guided evolution process; the god of creationists is incapable of doing this.

Creationists also put a strange limitation that says humans are not allowed to evolve even though the bible never refutes this. If you read Genesis, what it says is that animals were created first then humans were created after this. It doesn't say the two are related or share a common ancestor, nor does it explicitly refute this. All it says is that humans came after most other animals (which is true) and that humans are made in god's image. How anyone could see things like evolution or the big bang as being an attack on religion is beyond my understanding.
 
Smarter, as in more intelligent? No.

More educated? Yes.

Education does NOT equal smart/intelligent.

I suspect those neanderthals were far smarter in the ways of their lives than any of us could possibly be. Their daily lives had far more serious consequences of failure than modern-day living has.

Could a neanderthan build a computer? No, but how many geeks could survive if they had to make their own tools and hunt their own food with a spear and knife?
 
survivor_china_official_logo.jpg
 
BoomerD said:
Smarter, as in more intelligent? No.
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Wrong.

BoomerD said:
Could a neanderthan build a computer? No, but how many geeks could survive if they had to make their own tools and hunt their own food with a spear and knife?
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...if a 'geek' was born and raised in the wild...I'd say the chances are pretty good.
What's this supposed to prove? If you take someone out of their familiar environment and throw them into the wild, they will have a tough time surviving.

A 'geek' (or person born with our intelligence levels of today) back in the day could probably figure out new and better ways to hunt and gather just by maturing in that environment.

You have weird conceptions of intelligence. By your inference, all hermits and mountain men should be geniuses.
 
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A few things come to mind: Plato, Pyramids, Great Wall, Easter Island statues... I think ppl were as intelligent at least 2 to 5 thousand yrs ago.
 
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